Cupcake Fest: Part 1

I've made a lot of cupcakes since I started with my bake-a-thon. So I'll post them all in a row over the next few days, starting with the first ones I made.

Froot Loop Cupcakes - originally posted March 6, 2009

This week I thought I should make some kind of cupcakes and I wanted to try some non-chocolate ones. I found this recipe in the LiveJournal community bakebakebake.


Froot Loop Cupcakes

1/2 cup butter (I used margarine)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
Zest from 1 Lemon
Zest from 1 Orange
1 1/2 cups Froot Loops
(Optional, but recommended) Icing Sugar

Preheat oven to 350, Line 12 muffin cups
Cream butter. Add sugar to butter and continue to cream. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Beat in vanilla.
In another bowl sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with milk. (ie mix in some flour then some milk then more flour then more milk ect.)
Add the lemon and orange zest.
Spoon batter into muffin cups and then sprinkle generous amounts of Froot Loops onto each cupcake.
Bake for 20-25 minutes then let them cool completely before sprinkling icing sugar on the tops.

So, I really like cupcake part of this recipe but unfortunately baking the Froot Loops makes them a little dry and stale. I think little kids would probably love these and they're really easy to make but I'm not sure if I'll make them again. I'll probably use the cupcake part of this recipe again because they were very tasty cupcakes.

Sorry about the quality of the picture, I didn't have a camera so I had to angle the webcam on my computer to take a picture without getting icing sugar all over it.

EDIT: Okay, I felt I had to add this. These cupcakes are good the first day you make them only! The cake part is still good the next day but the Froot Loops turn into these weird chewy soggy fruit loops. So I would suggest only making these the day you plan to eat them. They are not good after that.

These cupcakes are, however, amazing, if instead of Froot Loops, you top them with:

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz (half a package) cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Icing sugar (about 3 cups)
Yellow Food Colouring

Cream together cream cheese and butter. Beat in about a cup of icing sugar and the lemon juice. Continue adding icing sugar until it is the desired consistency. Then add some yellow food colouring.

This is pretty tasty icing! I liked it, its lemony and sweet and pretty good. But it made too much for the dozen cupcakes that the froot loops recipe made so I decided to make some more cupcakes. So I found this recipe.

Lemon-Lime Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups butter (or margarine), softened
3 cups white sugar
5 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon extract
3 cups flour
3/4 cup of lemon-lime pop (ie Sprite or 7-Up, I used Sprite Zero because its what I had)

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together butter and sugar. Add in eggs, one at a time. Add in the lemon extract and some of the flour. Add the rest of the flour and the pop in small bits alternating between the two. So add a little flour, a little pop, a little flour, a little pop ect. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Decorate with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing.